Brutal (10 page)

T
he warehouse of M
/s Turbo Steels Pvt. Limited stood on a secluded road branching out from the Grand Trunk Road. Nothing usually moved on this road, except occasional trucks carrying steel bars to the warehouse. Even during the day, lush green fields of sugarcane and tall trees would conceal the movement of people and goods on this road from public view. In the darkness of the evening today, the road lay as silent as a graveyard. The nearest building, an abandoned car garage, was more than a kilometre away from the warehouse.

There was no chance that any onlooker would spot the car parked carefully behind this garage. Two people sat in the car since the last couple of hours, waiting for the evening to grow darker. In a minute, both of them came out of the car, holding torchlights in hands. They sneaked into the adjoining sugarcane field.

“You really think it’s a good idea?” Mrinal said, stooping low while negotiating his way through the sharp sugarcane leaves.

“Believe me. If there was a better option, I would’ve gone for it,” Prakash replied. “I’m just as scared as you are.”

A few hours ago, after parking their car, Prakash had checked-out the front side of the warehouse. Outside the entry gate, he saw a small room with a window. There seemed to be some movement inside the room suggesting the presence of one or two guards. They had probably locked the entry gate and remained outside. So, entry from the front gate was impossible.

The only remaining option was to enter from the back of the warehouse. To make things simpler, it bordered on the sugarcane fields, allowing for stealth.

“How are we going to get into the warehouse?” Mrinal whispered.

“We’ll find a way.”

Both of them walked in the dark sugarcane field trying hard not to stumble over a stump. It was a tough walk and took them about twenty minutes to cover the distance. The wall at the back of the warehouse greeted them with a foul smell of rotten food and urine. The grass was wet, slimy and littered with dirty polythene bags and beer bottles.

There was a large but rusty metal gate on the wall, which was locked tight with a thick iron chain. The sharp spear-shaped tops on the gate threatened to make climbing difficult. But these were exactly what Prakash thought they can hold on to while climbing.

Prakash put his ears on the metal gate to listen to any movement inside the building.
No movement.

“I’ll climb first,” Prakash said.

He secured his right leg on the rough wall and the left on the metal gate. By giving a slight jerk to his body, he was able to catch hold of a pointed top. He pulled his body up while his legs and knees scraped on the wall. In a few seconds, he was finally standing on the wall. He took care not to cut himself with the sharp glass shards embedded on the wall top. Prakash studied the warehouse meticulously.

The warehouse compound comprised of a large open ground adjoining the wall and an enormous tin-roofed building, completely washed in darkness. A huge pile of long iron bars and rods was lying over the ground. Three trucks were standing beside this iron dump. The entry gate of the warehouse was to his left.
Let’s hope it’s locked.

“Nobody seems to be there. As we expected,” Prakash said, looking down at Mrinal from the top. “I’m getting in.”

He used the support of the pointed tops to get down into the warehouse compound. He stood there till Mrinal also entered the compound in the same way.

“We should be getting a Pulitzer for what we are doing,” Mrinal said, while walking behind Prakash.

They crossed the iron dump yard and approached the tin-roofed building. Prakash threw torchlight over the building. Three large door-less halls, connected by a corridor, came into view.

Two of the halls were packed to the rafters with long iron rods and bars, protruding almost halfway down the corridor’s breadth. Prakash checked out the two halls one by one. Mrinal followed him closely. After the fiasco at Afroz’s house, Mrinal seemed careful not to remain very far from Prakash. There was nothing of any importance in these rooms.

They walked towards the third hall. It seemed vacant from a distance, but as they got in, a nauseating stench of human urine and faeces hit their nostrils.

“What the hell are they doing here?” Prakash said, flashing the torchlight inside the hall. He was both surprised and scared to see what was in front of him.

There were three empty metallic cages at the far end of the hall. Each cage was about six feet tall and three feet wide. The grills were made up of cast iron rods, like the ones they saw in the other rooms. As they came closer to the cages, they could see thick metal chains lying inside. A white powder was strewn on the floor of the cages. From its smell, Prakash figured out it was bleaching powder. He had an eerie feeling about the cages.

“Seems like we’re in the right place,” Prakash whispered, swallowing.

“Look at that,” Mrinal squeaked with a horrified face. He was pointing at the floor of the corner-most cage.

What Prakash saw made his hair stand on end.
Blood.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Mrinal said, almost getting into a sprint.

“Wait!” Prakash said, throwing his light beam at a corner. “There seems to be another room.”

Washed in the light, a metallic door came into view. It was not locked, but shut simply with a large latch.

“We have to check this out,” he continued.

“Hurry up, then. I don’t want to find myself in those cages.”

Prakash opened the latch and pushed the door carefully, not making any sound. He flashed the torch around. The room was about half the size of the bigger rooms. At exactly the mouth of the room, there was a desktop computer on a table beside a large steel almirah.

“Take out the hard drive,” Prakash said.

Mrinal nodded and got down to work.

Prakash moved inwards. There were various cartons lying on the floor. He pored over each of them. Most were filled with hardware parts. One of the cartons piqued his interest. It was a plastic carton, unlike the others, which were made of paper. He opened its flaps and looked inside. It contained a video camera, a few tripods, some lighting equipment and a black robe and mask.
Home run.

“I have found what we were looking for,” Prakash whispered. He lifted the video camera and showed it to Mrinal.

“Oh my God! This is good,” he said. “But I am stuck with this desktop. The CPU box is locked with a strong bolt. It won’t open. Why don’t…” Mrinal went silent all of a sudden.

The sound of a vehicle reached their ears. It had pulled over outside the entry gate.

“Bloody hell! Let’s run,” Prakash said, rushing towards the door. Mrinal was already outside.

They made their way past the cages and came out of the hall into the corridor. The metallic sound of a lock being opened echoed in the silence.

The main gate is opening. Shit!

There was no way they were going to escape. The only option was hiding. As the main door opened, they ran into one of the large halls containing the iron rods. The heap was large enough to hide two people. Both Prakash and Mrinal were now crouched behind the metal heap. In complete darkness.

A vehicle got inside the compound and stopped. Prakash could hear a few men getting down and dragging someone out, who was crying in pain.
A man!
The wails of the man intensified in a few seconds. It seemed the other men were hauling him across the corridor. A realization made Prakash shudder.
They are taking him to the cages.

The victim kept on crying and wailing as they dragged him into the adjoining hall. His cries stopped all of a sudden after a loud shriek. Prakash winced. Mrinal caught his shoulder.
Did they just kill him?

Prakash heard footsteps moving towards their hall.
Shit.
The men stopped at the opening of their hall and started smoking. He tried hard to listen to what they were saying. Their words were barely audible. All he could gather were a few words – ‘…got the bastard after 8 years’ and the name ‘Kunal Chaubey’.

T
he Mussoorie Diversion Road
in Dehradun gives a breath-taking view of lush green valleys and hills to travellers. While driving down the road comprising of numerous estates and hotel resorts, one can almost miss a quaint and silent estate named Jayanti Greens. A closer look on its perimeter however, suggests an unusually secure and protected campus. The estate is protected by thick walls, with barbwires passing over its top and a few smooth wires running parallel to them. Garbage collectors often find rotting carcasses of crows, squirrels and sparrows in a dustbin kept along the wall. ‘Poor creatures’, they moan. ‘They touched the smooth wires.’

No structure inside the compound is visible from outside with thick rows of deodar and mango trees obstructing the view of curious onlookers. The campus houses a two-storied sprawling mansion with CCTVs mounted at strategic positions.

Jayanti Greens is owned by the Kushwaha family, which runs one of the largest private security companies in India. Bastion Corp provides security services to a large number of corporations, industrial installations, construction sites, hotels and even to political parties. It also provides need-based security to people who can afford its high price tag. Its clientele has often included visiting celebrities, sports stars, business tycoons and politicians.

The patriarch of the family, Tejeshwar Kushwaha, stood on the balcony on the backside of his mansion, with a grim face. His wrinkled face and a set of deep lines running on his forehead made him look way older than his sixty-nine years. He was so thin that his dazzling-white kurta-pyjamas and waistcoat fluttered unimpeded in the gentle breeze.

The man was rarely seen in public, but was highly regarded and often feared in the inner circles of business and politics. It had taken about three generations of Kushwahas to build that reputation, and he hoped he would see its pinnacle soon.

It was dark outside but he did not bother getting the lights turned on. He loved the view of the hills far away in the darkness and the twinkling lights of vehicles moving on narrow roads over them. The hills looked like giants in front of the tiny vehicles; mercifully letting them move and pass. He sometimes felt the same about himself. A man who pulls the strings from above while the world moves.

He looked at his watch. His elder son Vinod was about to arrive. They would be meeting after almost a year. Not for family bonding, but for business. He had slowly handed over the reins to his son’s Vinod and Adesh. However, things had not gone that smoothly. Bastion Corp was doing well, no doubt, because of the heightened need for private security after the on-going spate of terror attacks on the country. Had it been their real business, he would have felt good about it. But his sons needed to understand that their family’s real business was power and influence. They had to protect it and earn more of it. Like he had done till now. And to do that, he knew he would have to remind his sons again what the Kushwahas stood for.

He was proud that he had witnessed the evolution of his family business from mere ‘guns for hire’ and professional assassins to political power brokers. As he stood in the dark, his mind went over the four decades he had spent at the helm of affairs.

He had received a fledgling organization from his father, with the Marwaris as their major customers. They had hired them to protect their tea estates in West Bengal where a rebellion among the proletariat was brewing. The Kushwahas were used to assassinate a lot of their leaders and crush the uprising, which unfortunately didn’t happen. Tejeshwar was not happy with these low-end operations. He wanted to be at the centre of power. That meant spreading their tentacles in Delhi.

The power circles in Delhi at that time were in serious need of some firepower and muscle. They accepted the Kushwahas with open arms. The country was going through a construction boom. New industries were coming up. Land was scarce and often needed to be acquired through force. That’s where the Kushwahas came handy.

Tejeshwar build a loyal set of clients, who used his services quite often. Many businessmen, leaders and social activists would later die; some would vanish overnight. Political parties would blame each other and neighbouring countries, while the puppeteer behind the scenes, Tejeshwar, would march on with a smile.

He was a clever man. To stay clear of the law enforcement authorities, he wanted to give a legitimate face to his business. It resulted in Bastion Corp, one of the early private security companies of the country. Behind the veneer Bastion Corp, the dark business of the Kushwaha family flourished.

He hired ex-army men, mercenaries and professional killers, and provided them with the best of equipment and training. Average performers would find themselves in Bastion Corp; while the best of the best would go on to become professional assassins. This business was not for the light hearted. There was no going back once the men accepted the dark world. Misfits and the apologetic would often vanish, purged mercilessly.

Over the years, Tejeshwar built contacts with private military organizations and mercenaries across the world and supplied them with people. His men were hired by the militia in Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia. Private military companies like Blackwater employed his men on contract during the gulf war to guard their oil exploits and reconstruction business. In India, RAW, the external intelligence agency used the Kushwaha men for their black-ops in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Today, they had the capability of arm-twisting governments in South-Asia. Their power in India was spread like cancer – in the government, law-enforcing authorities, business and even in smaller cities. Every businessman and politician who saw an unprecedented and surprising rise owed something to their family. Yet nobody took their name in public discussions. Officially, there was no such family or organization.

Tejeshwar heard footsteps behind him. His bodyguard Dara Singh walked into the balcony.

“Vinod
Bhai
has arrived,” the man said.

“Send him here,” Tejeshwar said without turning around. “And switch on the lights”.

Tejeshwar knew that if his son was here to discuss business, it must have been something important. Their business from private military companies had seen a dip over the years, with the US planning to move out from Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also a backlash against private military forces worldwide and they were being seen as mercenaries not bound by any law. That was not good for business. The world needed new wars and he knew it. The action was in Asia. Islamic extremism was claiming new territories.
They would need our support.

But he was often anxious about Vinod’s vision for their future, because it differed a lot from his own. Tejeshwar accepted the fact that every son in his family had often discarded the vision of his father and then gone on to find his own way.

But Vinod’s thoughts were so radically different that he was left worried. His son wanted the family to expand into the business of ‘specialized’ weapons. His vision was that in future, it would matter little who carried the weapon. What would matter is the weapon. That was a fundamentally different thought from his ancestors, who had believed in letting the best man do the job.

Tejeshwar knew he would not survive to see which direction his family takes. He had sent his other son Adesh for military training the same way he had done for himself and Vinod. He wondered what ideas that lad would bring.
Better leave some things to destiny.

He sensed someone standing behind. He turned around. It was Vinod.

The old man studied his son. He looked different. The last time they met, his son had short hair. Today, he walked in with slick black, long hair drooping over his eyes like a waterfall. His throat was bonier and lips unusually dark.
When will he stop smoking?

“You have become so thin, father,” Vinod said with a smile and hugged him.

“So have you. Doing too much work, eh?” Tejeshwar said, patting on his shoulder. “You must sometimes devote some time to the fairer sex also.”

“I am, nowadays.” Vinod winked.

“What makes you visit me so urgently in the night?”

“There is a lucrative party from Iran. The Quds Force. They are planning a mission in India,” he said looking straight into the eyes of his father. “We need to talk.”